A few months ago, I decided to conduct an informal survey. I’d begun thinking about the relationships between health literacy research and health care workers’ everyday practice. Since I often get to talk with physicians one-on-one, I decided to ask the next few physicians I encountered a simple question: When you hear the phrase ‘health […]
Do your assessments measure what matters?
In this episode, you’ll learn a quick way you can increase the chances you’re assessing what matters when it comes to patient education. sample questions you can ask yourself and your next patient some exciting news about your use of medical metaphors! SHOW TRANSCRIPT Hi this is 10 minutes to better patient communication. I’m Dr. […]
10 Ways to communicate a complex idea during patient education
If you’ve got to explain something to a patient, how do you do it? If you have important information or complex ideas to share, how do you get it all across? This is another in my series on patient education. I’ve talked about getting clear on what you’re teaching and how you’re assessing; on patient […]
Providers: your words may have more power than you realize
I was recently speaking with a woman who has Stage III ovarian cancer. We were talking about the language that gets used around cancer and other terminal diseases. She retold one conversation that stood out to her, because of her surgeon’s careful use of language: “He said, ‘Y’know it’s gonna get us in the end.’ […]
Patient communication: Aristotle helps you break it down
You want to do better with your spoken communication. Who better to turn to than the Ancient Greeks? They knew a thing or two about high-stakes verbal communication. In this episode, you’ll learn the 5 elements of any oral communication what you can learn from that annoying news anchor you can’t stand a quick way […]
A practical way to address unconscious bias in language
Over the course of last year, I spoke several times with an African American male physician. At one point, we were talking about his professional journey in medicine. He mentioned that he had learned to be more comfortable with, as he put it, “…being the only Black person in the room. Hearing ‘How did YOU […]